Joyce McNair

EKUNDAYO

We lived for less than a year in a small town in rural Georgia where my sisters and I attended an all black school. This was the South during the 1950's.

Since my father had joined the army five years earlier, we had moved three times. I was still not accustomed to those first weeks of school where as the "new girl," I was the object of sometimes cruel scrutiny by the other kids as they inspected my hair and clothes to see if I measured up to whatever scale they used.

After a week or two of this special kind of torture, I would find a friend and my ordeal ended. Since I was no longer a single target, my tormenters lost interest, shifting their attention to something or someone else. With my new friend, I became just another face in the crowd.

I felt safe as a nonentity. You see, I thought I was ugly. My older sister, Edwina, had been telling me I was ugly for years. Lately, my younger sister, Debra, had begun to taunt me too. The two had even composed a special song just for me:

"You some ug-a-lee child. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

I believed them because I was convinced that they were pretty and I was not. I remember several occasions while walking with my mother and Edwina and Debra when people stopped to talk to us.

"Oh, aren't they pretty," they would say looking at my two sisters. Then they would notice me. "Oh, she's cute, too," they would add (so I would not feel left out, of course.)

It was not about color. All three of us were dark-skinned. (Color discrimination does exist among some African Americans.) During that period of my life, I thought ugliness was my burden.

So at age 14, I was about to enter ninth grade, my first year of high school, in a new location, to encounter not only adolescent tensions, but also to adjust to a different environment. As usual, my father's orders to relocate did not correspond with the beginning of the school year. The students had already formed their friendships by the time I enrolled. Once again, I was alone, at least temporarily.

Nearly five weeks passed before I finally connected with Brenda, who had transferred into my English class. Immediately I identified her as a kindred spirit when she slid into the seat next to mine and smiled at me.

She was a country girl who lived on her family's farm, so I continued walking to and from school alone. But now I did not have to eat lunch by myself. I did not have to find a corner spot at an end table with my brown bag and pretend I was so engrossed in the book I was reading that I was oblivious to the laughter and gossip of the kids around me. Now I could enter the lunch room with my friend. Often I exchanged my baloney sandwiches for her biscuits and thick slices of bacon. (The lunchroom was simply a place to eat bag lunches.) How quickly those 45 minutes flew.

As close as we were at school, Brenda and I never visited each other at our respective homes. At my home, I was a loner and I liked it that way.

Wherever we settled, Edwina, my older sister--now a high school senior--always had a group of friends who followed her lead. The Georgia school was no exception. She was in her own world surrounded by admirers with whom I had minimal contact. And quite honestly, Debra, my younger sister, who shared my bedroom, was a spoiled brat. I deliberately avoided her as much as possible.

The school year began to unfold for me, neither spectacularly wonderful or miserably bad, but better than tolerable. As usual, my grades were tops.

Then spring came. The warmer weather and longer days had a soothing effect on everyone. The teachers were more relaxed. Incidents by students that would not have been tolerated earlier in the school year were dismissed with a brief reprimand.

Students who were not already paired began eyeing each other with a new awareness. Boys standing in groups silently watched girls passing by. The girls, also in groups, were a little noisier in their observance as they participated in the two-way ritual.

I was a little uncomfortable when I realized that even I was sometimes the object of attention. The few times this happened, I convinced myself that my imagination was working overtime.

One day as Brenda joined me at our lunch table she leaned over and whispered to me excitedly,

"The word's out that you like James Patterson."

"What?" I almost shouted.

At one time or another many girls in the school had had crushes on James Patterson. James was not only good-looking, but smart and a real nice guy--at least that is what I heard. The only time I had seen him really up close was at an honor society meeting. At the time, he did not have a steady girlfriend, but he had a lot of friends.

I was shocked and embarrassed at the thought that I was even mentioned in the same breath with James.

"Who told you that?" I whispered back to Brenda.

"I heard it in the locker room when I was dressing for gym," she replied.

"Whoever said it was on the other side of the lockers, so I couldn't see who it was," she continued.

I sat stunned, my appetite completely gone. I was so upset at being made fun of--and by kids I hardly knew. I was sure it was somebody's idea of a joke to spread that kind of rumor about me.

I wanted to hide. For the rest of the day--in fact, for all the next week--I made myself as inconspicuous as possible, arriving just before the last bell for each class and leaving as soon as the bell sounded announcing the end of the period. I even persuaded Brenda to stay inside the lunch room with me after we ate our lunches.

No one seemed to pay any particular attention to me as the days slowly passed. So after about two weeks I began to think that Brenda had misunderstood what she overheard and I started to relax again.

Besides, Spring Carnival was coming. Spring Carnival is the event of the school year. In fact, the entire black population of that small Georgia town celebrated Spring Carnival. It took place on the first day of May, a school holiday.

There was all kinds of food for sale, games and contests for individuals and groups, entertainment, a Maypole dance with beautifuly dressed girls winding colorful paper streamers around a decorated pole, and the coronation of the Carnival king and queen.

I had already saved three dollars from money my mother occasionally gave me. Brenda and I planned to meet early so that we could enter as many games as possible and eat as much food as we could hold. I daydreamed about the food--sweet potato pie, spicy barbecue--the kind that I have never been able to find since I left the South-- homemade ice cream, potato salad--just thinking about the food made my mouth water.

On the day of Spring Carnival as I walked to the athletic field where the day's activities would take place, a warm breeze filled with the smells of the food swept over me. It was nine o'clock in the morning and already I was hungry.

The weather was perfect--blue sky with an occasional puffy cumulus cloud. The crowd was beginning to gather and would continue to grow as the day progressed.

I spotted Brenda near one of the game booths and hurried over to meet her. We decided to pool our money to make it stretch as far as possible. Immediately we decided that it was time to eat. We headed toward one of the more compelling aromas coming from the direction of the barbecue area.

Barbecue in rural Georgia is different from barbecue from other parts of the South, like Texas or Oklahoma. There is no red sauce. Pork is finely shredded and flecked with pepper. The taste is a mixture of hickory smoke, vinegar, and spices. To eat it this kind of barbecue is an out-of-this-world experience.

Stuffed and temporarily sated after finishing the barbecue, we sat on the grass watching the relay races until we lost interest and wandered away. We entered the two-person potato sack race--one leg from each of us--and stumbled after only four or five disjointed steps. As we fell to the ground laughing I said to myself,

"This is the most perfect day of my life."

As the day wore on other events reinforced that impression. We ate several times more, each time trying a different food. We cheered participants in various contests. We listened to the school chorus sing those tunes we had heard them rehearsing throughout the year as we passed through the school hallways. But most of all, we mingled with the mellow crowd.

As late afternoon approached, the excitement began to build for everyone as we anticipated who would be crowned king and queen. The crowd had begun to gather around the stage as the time for coronation drew near. Brenda and I pushed our way forward to a spot where we could see everything clearly. We were next to the walkway where the king and queen would promenade after they had been crowned.

At first I did not notice the group of high school boys moving through the crowd near the walkway. As they passed Brenda and me, one of them turned and looked directly at me. My eyes widened as my heart sank. It was James Patterson. I had not seen him since before that rumor had started.

As he looked at me his mouth turned down on one side in a sneer. He stood there eyeing me scornfully as his friends stared at me while crowding around him.

"I wouldn't be caught dead with anyone as black and ugly as you," he said loudly and started moving away. Laughing loudly, his buddies followed him.

Everyone close by heard him and turned to look at me. There was an awkward silence for a few brief seconds amid the noise of the surrounding throng. Then mercifully a firecracker exploded in the distance and the crowd noises immediately filled the air.

I stood in a daze hearing sounds in the distance as if I were swimming underwater. Gradually I became aware that Brenda was speaking to me, a concerned expression on her face.

"Are you alright?" she asked anxiously.

"That was the meanest thing I ever heard in my life." She was clutching my arm, trying to get some response from me.

"I want to go home," I murmured.

My mind was racing as I reviewed routes in my head that would take me to my house quickly without being seen. By then, no one was paying the slightest attention to me. But I still felt raw and vulnerable. Brenda and I walked slowly through the crowd to the edge of the athletic field, then we continued on through the quiet, dusty streets. She glanced furtively at me from time to time as we walked.

Brenda, who had never been to my house before, accompanied me all the way home. As I turned into the walkway leading to my front porch, she stopped.

"You're coming to school tomorrow, aren't you?"

"Are you gonna be okay?"

I nodded and managed a weak smile. I entered the silent house and was in bed pretending to be asleep when my family came home.

For the next few days I moved mechanically around the house and at school. I did not feel like crying. I was numb. No one tried to talk to me or paid any special attention to me. I was in a kind of shock where nothing really registered, even on the day when I realized that Brenda was absent. I found an empty table in a corner in the lunch room and began eating my lunch.

"Hi, how are you?" I looked up into the smiling, kindly face whose attention was directed at me. Warily I replied,

"I'm okay."

As the initial shock of the unexpected attention wore off, I looked at the stranger curiously. The school was small enough so that anyone who stood out would be noticed immediately. I had never seen this boy before because if I had, definitely I would have remembered him.

He was tall and slender with large dark brown almond shaped eyes shaded by long eyelashes. Wide full lips enclosed beautiful white teeth. A strong broad nose on velvety black skin completed his handsome face.

His expression was pleasant but serious.

"Is it alright if I sit down?" he asked.

"Sure," I replied.

I felt myself gradually relaxing as we began to talk. He told me that his name was Ekundayo, a name I had never heard before.

"Eh-koon-dye-oh," I repeated slowly.

I meant to ask him why his parents gave him such a funny name, but I never got around to it.

We talked about many things. Suddenly I heard myself laughing--something I had not done since the carnival. When the bell sounded ending the lunch period, he walked with me to my class. Before I entered the classroom, he said,

"I'll see you after school."

Several very curious girls watched him as he walked away.

After school, he was waiting for me, looking very relaxed as he leaned against a car parked near the entrance to the school.

As we walked, he listened attentively while I told him about myself.

Without prying, he asked me questions about my family and my interests. I told him about my family's frequent moves and how that affected me.

When we reached my house, he paused, smiling at me and said,

"I'll see you in the morning."

When I entered my house, I was smiling. My mother noticed right away that I was in a much better mood.

"You must have had a good day."

"Yes, I did."

I had not realized that she and my father had been very concerned about me, but had hesitated to say anything hoping that I would eventually tell them what was bothering me.

Sure enough, the next morning Ekundayo stood by the road in front of my house waiting to walk with me to school. A pattern began that day. He always walked with me to and from school. We continued eating lunch together only until Brenda returned after a week's absence because of illness. He never appeared in the lunch room again.

We talked about everything although, in retrospect, I did most of the talking. He did say that his own family's frequent moves allowed him to understand my shyness and sense of isolation.

In those days we did not go on dates. Ekundayo and I would meet at the movies for the Saturday matinees, the day set aside for the black community to use the theater. Serials and horror films like "The Mummy Walks" and "The Creeping Hand" were some of the features shown. There was as much conversation and movement among the audience as there was on screen. Often it was impossible to hear the movie dialogue.

A week before the end of the school term, my father announced at the dinner table that he had been assigned to a military post in Texas and we would be leaving as soon as school ended.

"But, Daddy, I'm really starting to like it here."

"You mean we have to move again?"

In the past I had accepted news of yet another move without much thought and no discussion. Those days were over. For the first time, I was really upset. I knew that arguing would do no good. But I felt it important to let my parents hear my displeasure.

Both of them sat quietly listening to me. My sisters were silent. Edwina did not care. She was graduating from high school and her friends were all going in different directions anyway. Debra was unconcerned. I was the only dissident.

The next day on the way to school I did not say anything to Ekundayo about the move. I wanted to tell Brenda first. I knew she would be disappointed and she was. While consoling each other, we promised that we would keep in touch.

Later, on the way home, I told Ekundayo. He did not really say very much. In front of my house he turned to me and took both of my hands into his.

"I will miss you very much," he said softly.

He kissed me on the cheek and quickly walked away.

The next morning he was not waiting for me. After school he was not at his usual station. The last days of school passed without my seeing him. I missed him and I began to worry. Suddenly I realized that I knew very little about him. I had been so caught up in my misery at our initial encounter and so content as our friendship deepened that I neglected to find out more about him. I did not even know his last name.

When I asked other kids about him, they knew even less. Everyone had assumed that he was a new student. But no one remembered seeing him in any classes. After further inquiries, I recalled that I met him on the first day of Brenda's absence less than six weeks before. His disappearance from my life was as abrupt as his appearance had been. The mysterious circumstances around Ekundayo remained a puzzle to me for many years.

Not long after leaving Georgia, I became aware that my preoccupation with my appearance was fading. I no longer felt that I had to be so inconspicuous, even when I entered a new school environment. My self confidence continued to grow as we moved from Texas, to Germany, then Massachusetts, and finally to California where we settled for good. Brenda and I wrote to each other for several years. Gradually our letters became more infrequent as our lives changed. Finally the letters stopped.

Many years passed. I went away to college, got married, worked, raised three children, divorced, went back to school, and began a new life.

The self assurance that I manifest today, I attribute primarily to my own inevitable maturation. But at a critical moment in my development, I was the beneficiary of the loyalty and support of my best friend Brenda and Ekundayo's mystical appearance in my life. Their friendship, particularly that of Ekundayo, helped me gain a sense of self worth that is so critical if one is to become a thriving, fulfilled individual. Much later when I began to study African and African American culture, I learned that the name "Ekundayo" is from the Yoruba ethnic group in West Africa. It means "sorrow becomes happiness."

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UNEQUAL JUSTICE IN THE JUSTICE COURT

As I turned off Interstate 5 and began the five mile descent on a road called Skyline Boulevard through the bare, parched hills into Avenal, I felt I was entering another world, a world previously described in detail by mystery writer Sue Graftonin some of her novels. Avenal is the site of a large oil processing plant and a state prison, located in the Central Valley of California.

It was already 95 degrees at 8:30 that August morning. I was on my way to the Justice Court where my 67 year old uncle was about to be sentenced. A month earlier while having a schizophrenic episode, he had been arrested at a filling station near Hanford driving a car he had stolen from an acquaintance. The car was filled with items he had taken from his friend's apartment. He had driven away without paying for the gas. He was stopped by the Highway Patrol as he drove down the freeway. He was on his way to Los Angeles he had said. To my knowledge he knew no one there.

He was a little disoriented and incoherent at the time of the arrest, according to the probation officer I had spoken to three weeks earlier. His friend, relieved at having his car and belongings found, had not pressed charges. But the District Attorney's office had charged him with receiving stolen property, a felony, for leaving without paying for the gas.

Because I had once worked as a paralegal in a trial lawyer's office, I had contacted my former boss, explained to him the circumstances of my uncle's arrest, and he in turn, had called a lawyer friend in Hanford who made some more calls. The result of these calls was that the felony charge was reduced to a misdemeanor.

The probation officer said he would recommend conditional probation, a less restrictive form of probation, since this was my uncle's first offense. He suggested that I write a letter to the court explaining my uncle's mental state, which I did.

He could have been released on bail almost immediately. I am not sure why he refused. Instead he remained in jail for 30 days. Today was his hearing.

The courthouse was in a one story, contemporary stucco government office complex in the middle of town. Thankfully it was air-conditioned. As I entered the courtroom and took a seat in the rear I immediately noticed that this court was unlike any I had ever seen before.

Lawyers, defendants, families, friends, court personnel were all milling about, talking, gesturing. Hardly anyone was seated. Presiding over this rather chaotic scene was the judge--a young, white male with patrician features and movie star handsome looks. I imagined that he was the scion of one of the rich farming families in the area. For Avenal is in a part of the state made incredibly rich by intensive use of fertilizers, pesticides, and underground watersheds to grow crops, and pumps to retrieve oil. Cattle by the thousands with their unforgettable odor lined the freeway. Oil, cattle, crops. The big three whose immense revenues funded the skyscrapers in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

On my drive down I-5 from the San Francisco Bay Area, I could not help but notice the huge cultivated fields that extended in the distance for miles on both sides of the freeway. Though acre after acre of cotton, grapes, and other growing things owned by huge corporate conglomerates used the latest farm equipment, the entire system would collapse without the manual labor supplied by the migrant workers. In the midst of the area's unprecedented prosperity, the least respected.

The judge had probably attended Stanford Law or even one of the Ivy League schools. After a few years in a very lucrative local law practice, he had probably received his judicial appointment and begun the ascent by appointment or election to higher office.

He conducted his court as if he were a feudal lord administering his fiefdom. The defendants were primarily migrant workers from Mexico who required interpreters. Most charges were for driving under the influence. Almost all received jail sentences of varying lengths. One middle-aged white man who had four previous DUI arrests and had been ordered never to drive again, received a stiff reprimand. Period.

Before entering the courtroom I had noticed in the foyer a well-dressed young white couple talking with someone who seemed to be their lawyer. In the courtroom I saw the lawyer whispering in the judge's ear. A few minutes later the judge announced that the case against the couple had been dismissed. The couple left immediately.

Finally my uncle's name was called. Meekly following the bailiff he came in--a thin grey-haired black man of medium height--wearing an orange jail coverall, handcuffs on his wrists and shackles on his ankles. The slave image was inescapable.

I moved to a seat near the front of the courtroom. After the charges were read, suddenly the procedure, which up to now had been very informal, became quite formal. I had been assured by the lawyer handling my uncle's case that he would be released today. Now the deputy D.A. was demanding to hear verbally that Contra Costa County, where my uncle lived, was requesting transfer of the case for supervision.

Frantically my uncle's lawyer and I tried to reach the probation officer in charge of the case. It was five minutes to noon. While we were on the telephone, the judge sentenced my uncle to three years formal probation which meant that he would be under the strict supervision of a probation officer. So much for unconditional probation. However, it did appear that the verbal request from Contra Costa County would not be necessary.

I was told that my uncle would be released later that afternoon at the county jail in Hanford. I drove out of town slowly, but not too slowly. I did not want to give anyone the slightest excuse to stop me. As I drove I took a deep breath. I felt as if I had been holding my breath the entire four hours I had spent in Avenal.

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Cover Design: Joseph McNair